Bulk solidifying amorphous alloys are a recently discovered family of amorphous alloys, which can be cooled at substantially lower cooling rates, of about 500 K/sec or less, and retain their amorphous atomic structure substantially. As such, they can be produced in thickness of 1.0 mm or more, substantially thicker than conventional amorphous alloys, which have typical thicknesses of 0.020 mm and which require cooling rates of 105 K/sec or more.
Because of their improved properties, bulk-solidifying amorphous alloys have been found to be a useful matrix material for a variety of reinforcement material, including composite materials. Such composite materials and methods of making such composite materials have been disclosed, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,567,251; 5,866,254; 5,567,532; and 6,010,580.
However, the processing of such bulk-solidifying amorphous composites with high volume fractions of reinforcement material poses some challenges and hinders the development and use of such composites. For example, thus far composite articles made with bulk-solidifying amorphous materials have typically limited to materials where the volume fraction of particulate reinforcement material is less than 75%. In addition, it has proven difficulty to produce a composite bulk-solidifying amorphous material having a high volume fraction of fine carbon fiber reinforcement material.
Accordingly, a need exists to produce a fully dense bulk-solidifying amorphous composite having a high volume fraction of reinforcement material therein.